At the FIFA U-17 World Cup, an Indian style of football will finally kick off on the global stage

Despite the hiccups and inevitable obstacles, the team has had a highly intense exposure to international football over the past year.

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Updated: Sep 16, 2017, 11.14 PM IST

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The U-17 team with India captain Sunil Chhetri (in orange)

By Siddhanth Aney

In 20 days from today, India will have a World Cup history. Blank pages in stats sheets will receive their first entries and the country’s football establishment will have embarked on a complex and ambitious adventure. Ambitious and complex not because this is the first time an Indian team will play the final tournament of a Fifa World Cup, but because this experiment is critical to the larger idea — of turning India from a football-watching to a football-playing country.

This writer was in Bengaluru over the course of last week and managed to spend a little time to watch the team that is at the centre of the experiment and the boys who are charting the course of their future. What I saw on the pitch was, unequivocally, outstanding. Watching the team — with its complement of physios, doctor, trainers, the goalkeeping coach, assistant coach and head coach — take the field was enough to get a sense of how much has changed in the sport over just a couple of years. Back from a three-month stint in Europe, where they played against a selection of national teams and clubs, the squad has been based in Bengaluru for the past three weeks for the final leg of preparations.

At practice, a couple of players stand out. Some of them, based on how the coach finally decides to play, will be seen on the pitch of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on October 6 when the World Cup gets underway, and India take on the US in the third (of four) games on Day One.

Boris Singh Thangjam is a natty little wingback with seemingly endless energy. He is compact and has the ability to carry the ball at great speed and turn on a dime. Anwar Ali, over 6 ft tall, is an imposing central defender similar in physicality to his namesake who won 33 India caps. Unlike his senior, however, Ali has learnt the game in a professional environment from coaches who are in the job armed not only with passion but also serious qualifications and experience.

There is Sunny Dhaliwal, the tallest keeper in the squad and a trainee with Major League Soccer team Toronto FC, who had to go through the tedious process of giving up his Canadian citizenship and assuming that of the country of his origin. Dhaliwal’s decision to do this is based both on his belief in his future in football and that playing for India is a big part of it. Aniket Jadhav is a powerful and skilful midfielder from Kolhapur who came up the junior ranks at Pune FC. The now-defunct club, which pulled out of the I-League in 2015 after five seasons, was one of the few that understood the value of an academy system from the beginning. When the club was dissolved, the academy was bought over by ISL franchise FC Pune City. Mohammad Nawaz is 170 cm (5.5 ft) and a goalkeeper. Against a strong US squad in Goa last year, the Manipuri keeper was outstanding. His athleticism and instinct made up for what he lacks in height and he was clear and confident in communicating with the players in front of him.

For all these boys, and their teammates, a successful career in Indian football is all but guaranteed. For some, with the international contacts they have now made and the exposure that will come through the World Cup, there will also be opportunities to go abroad and test those waters.

India football captain Sunil Chhetri visited the team before a practice session on September 7. “I would give 15 years of my career to be on your team and play the World Cup,” he told them with the intensity that he seems to muster instantly at any team event. “But I can’t.

All the people around you can’t. You are the best-prepared team India has ever had and you have an opportunity that no one in the country has ever had. All I can say is enjoy it and make the most of it.”

With Chhetri came the kit-makers, Nike. The kits look great and feel great. And any athlete who tells you that is not important is lying. Nike has been with the Indian team since 2005 and gradually expanded from the men’s team to the various age groups for both men and women. For the boys, it is another example of how different stakeholders are pulling, mostly in the same direction, because everyone wants Indian football to succeed.

Ball Hits the Bar There is always a but. Coach Luis Norton de Matos faces what are typically Indian problems. With less than three weeks to go, India have no games lined up, as yet, against other national teams. Domestic competition, at this stage, is nowhere near good enough because it doesn’t tell the players or the coaches where they stand. The US, who India face in the opener, will play at least five internationals between now and then. In Bengaluru, the India team could not train twice a day on a regular basis, partly because of the incessant rain and partly because they were borrowing another team’s facilities. At the hotel, there was no indoor swimming pool — now considered a necessity for recovery, injury management, and rehabilitation.

There is hope that the focus on this event will lead to the creation of a much-needed national training center with all the infrastructure that the modern game requires. Such a facility will eliminate a host of problems faced by all coaches, including Stephen Constantine of the senior squad. It is time, perhaps, for someone who stands to benefit from football’s commercial success to pony up.

Despite the hiccups and inevitable obstacles, the team has had a highly intense exposure to international football over the past year. You can sense, from the way they talk to each other on the field, the desire to repeat a drill in training and even from some of their results, that the end of a training cycle has been reached.

“In the games against Serbia and Macedonia and the tournament in Mexico we were playing against much bigger players very often,” says Matos. “But the boys are not afraid. They have confidence in what they have learnt and have developed extremely well over the past six months. Of course, I can say we will beat Colombia, but that would be unrealistic. We are trying to do in six months what has been happening for decades… my players are not obliged to win. But they are obliged to play for a win.”

(The writer is an independent sports journalist based in New Delhi)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)